how to DELETE windows vista?

Puffi · Post by **Puffi** » Thu Sep 18, 2008 4:08 pm

i broke my HDD that had my OS, so now i've been messing around with OS's on my storage drives. i put vista on there... didn't like it... and now i'm running windows XP again. the MBR is probably not very pretty as it has traces of older installations i had on the now broken HDD, because i left the storage HDD attached during windows install... stupid me. plus this crap i'm pulling now isn't helping anything either.

but the question is: how do i delete "c:\windows" which is the old, useless, non-working vista i cant even boot to? now i'm running XP from "c:\windows.0". it's a 500gb drive packed with data so no, i dont want to format.

i've been browsing the net for this... and many have had the problem, but they all ended up formatting the drive. except 1 who bought a whole new computer cos he was so pissed off. i dont want to be that guy! so help me!

blackworx · Post by **blackworx** » Thu Sep 18, 2008 11:28 pm

This is a classic "you need to wipe it and start again" situation. If the drive is just one big partition then you're pretty much screwed until you get some way to back up your data. The best way to do this is just to buy another drive and copy everything you need across. In the long run you want to have some sort of permanent backup method anyway.

Edit: if you do end up buying a new drive then you'd be better off installing XP onto that - and then copying your data across from the old one before repartitioning it.

Puffi · Post by **Puffi** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 3:24 am

yes i've done the wipe-and-start-again a million times... but i refuse to believe that's the only way. i have 2 drives, both 500gb, and about 30gb total free space. no way i can back that up anywhere. the OS drive that broke was a WD raptor that's just 150gb.

some program.. some.. thing.. anything.. that could delete the old windows? why exactly doesn't it let me delete it anyway?

KlaymenDK · Post by **KlaymenDK** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 4:06 am

If the MBR is trashed, have you tried (booting off of a floppy and) using the "fdisk /mbr" command?

aBo · Post by **aBo** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 4:28 am

The problem most likely is that you don't have the permissions to delete c:\windows. Boot to XP > go to My Computer > C:\ > right-click Windows-folder > Properties > Security > Advanced and then take ownership of Windows & all subcontainers for your user account.

Rebellious · Post by **Rebellious** » Sat Sep 20, 2008 1:43 pm

Just boot it up with an Ubuntu Live CD, it will delete anything you want, has no respect for NTFS security settings

Tez · Post by **Tez** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 1:07 pm

Not sure how you would delete Vista without formatting but you can fix the MBR using Vista Boot Pro. It works in XP and is mainly used for setting up dual boots but can also remove operating systems from the MBR. I used it to remove Vista and it worked great.

Not sure if this helps you much but here is the download link:

http://www.vistabootpro.org/

You click the "Manage OS entries" tab once in the program to do what I suggested.